A day in the life of Madison...

"Turn it up a little bit louder
Turn it up I love this song
Come on girl the world is ours
Let's do something right or wrong

Life is short
Let's go live it
Ain't no time for wasting time
Days like these they go by way too fast"

So, I'm Shelby, the guest writer for Madison today. She always uses her favorite lyrics from songs to write about her feelings. Her past few posts have been about summer, so I decided to share my love of summer as well but with a different song. I chose a song that didn't exactly talk about summer directly, but that reminds me that summer will go by quickly, so you have to live in the here and now. The song "Days Like These" by Jason Aldean is all about how days "go by way too fast" and I agree that sometimes we get so caught up in the little errors that occur day to day we miss all the good times. School tends to drag on forever, but summer is two months that zoom by like a freight train! Time is easily wasted on silly things like sleeping, or watching TV, but really we all need to go out and do something! Kids like me wait around for days just for the arrival of summer but then when it gets here we waste it. As Jason Aldean said "Life is short, let's go live it", summer is a time to relax and get over the stresses of tests and homework, but it is also time to have fun and spend those summer nights with your friends, not alone on the couch. Don't take your two months of freedom for granted, and never sit back and watch life pass you by..you will be surprised how quickly school comes back around to hit you in the face!

Two Bare Feet on the Dashboard

"School's out and the nights roll in

Man, just like a long lost friend

You ain't seen in a while

And can't help but smile"
- Summertime, Kenny Chesney

Once again, I've decided to talk about summer.. And I just can't contain my emotions. The idea that there are only twenty school days left until the season completely brightens every aspect of my life. It no longer bothers me that I have to wake up and waste away the sunshining days to be at school because less than a month from now I'll be relaxing in the blissful three months we like to call summer. I feel like Kenny Chesney totally said it best, summer, you are my "long lost friend" and I "can't help but smile" knowing that you're just around the corner. I feel like summer always equals happiness.. In every situation. And I sit back now and imagine what I'll be doing once summer arrives, and I look back and flip through the pictures of summer's past. I can feel my friends and my family settling in, knowing that after the stressful month ahead, we'll all be living the good life. Away from the environments of school. Away from the drama that may occur. And away from a lot of the people, let's face it, that we all really don't enjoy too much. So I plan on spending the next month cramming, of course, for my finals and once the evening of June 3rd rolls around letting "the nights role in, man, just like a long lost friend."

Imitation Writing

Excerpt:

"What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous." - John Green, Looking For Alaska

My Imitation:

How does someone just die? Without warning. Without notice. Dead. Gone in a matter of seconds. Is this normal now? Do people just die at the age of forty? The peace must have spread throughout his body that night after he tucked himself into bed, my mother lying next to him. Death overcame him without any signs. How could this even occur? No one just dies. Car accidents can mean death, cancer can eventually lead to death. Sleeping doesn't mean death. Instantaneous silent death doesn't occur on the young, only the old. But the silence overcame my father in that late September evening.


For my imitation I used John Green's use of rhetorical questioning along with his use of imagery and of sentence length variation.

Looking For Alaska

"When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail." - John Green, Looking For Alaska

"Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's very beautiful over there'. I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful." - John Green, Looking For Alaska

"Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present." - John Green, Looking For Alaska

"He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumi’s note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart." - John Green, Looking For Alaska

"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not ----, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane." - John Green, Looking For Alaska

John Green: Writer and Philosopher

Author, John Green, writes to evoke emotions in a reader through his inspiring story lines and philosophical ideas. Books like Looking For Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines really hit home for me as a reader. John Green's honest writing draws many young adults into the situations the characters are dealing with. The witty stories contain a deeper and more philosophical meaning that accesses the situations many teenagers are faced with. John Green uses many comparisons in humorous situations to lighten to overall mood of the book. His humor adds to the reality of what is happening in the book because with every situation, there are aspects of hilarity as well as aspects of seriousness. I feel like even though I wasn't really there, I can completely relate to Green's novels.
As a writer, I would like to be able to write in a way which draws readers in and evokes emotions in them through my writing. Bringing smiles, laughs, and tears, I would like to be able to write in a way which moves people through whatever the situations may be. Adding philosophy and inspiration to his writing, John Green is able to create a deeper meaning to any situation, which I strive to do in my writing as well.

'Cause tomorrow's just another day and I don't believe in time.

"One love might make the difference
Might take the walls and tear them down
One light might keep on shining

If we take one love and we spread it around"

-One Love, Hootie and The Blowfish 

So, I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few high schoolers with the love of Hootie and The Blowfish that I have.. But there's something so peaceful about listening to songs like Let Her Cry, Time, and Only Wanna Be With You. They're not all about sex and drugs and violence, or whatever else is mentioned in much of the intolerable music we hear nowadays. I feel like Hootie and The Blowfish just wants to write songs about friendship and love and sorrow or happiness, whatever they're feeling, and they want people to think the songs are catchy and actually feel as if they can relate to what they're listening to. They're not trying to be too different or too mainstream, they care about the Hootie listeners and how the music makes them feel.

Do-do-doo-doo.

"Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right"

Summer is almost here, thank God. But I think everyone's just happy that the sun is finally starting to come out again.. Maybe not this week, but it's been here the past few and it'll be back soon enough. And for some reason, I feel like the world is just so much happier when it's not 45* and raining. For many of us it's been that "long cold lonely winter" that we all dread as we think of December approaching and it's brought nothing but chills and sitting inside all day, alone- and in my case, watching hours upon end of reruns of The OC.. But no matter who you are, you can't tell me this winter was your best. Winter brought heartache and sadness to many, but I only heard a couple stories of winters worth remembering. But as the temperatures rise and the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, "the smiles [return] to the faces" of my friends, my family, and my daily acquaintances. Welcome back sunshine and happiness, "it seems like years since [you've] been here!"(: